Flamenco guitar and Cuban tres player Raúl Rodríguez Quiñones was born in Sevilla (Spain) in 1974. He started out playing electric guitar and drums, taking a particularly interest in blues and rock music, but by age 17 shifted his attention to playing flamenco guitar.
Raúl later attended the University of Sevilla, where he majored in the History of Cultural Anthropology. He began playing professionally in the group Caraoscura, a duo including himself and Jose Loreto “Charmusco,” the son of the famous guitarist Parrilla de Jerez. In 1995, they released an album titled Qué es lo que quieres de mí? on RCA Records that was produced by Kiko Veneno and Joe Dworniak.
In 1996, Raúl joined Kiko Veneno as his flamenco guitarist, touring and recording Punta Paloma (BMG 1997), Puro Veneno (BMG 1998), and La Familia Polio (BMG 2000). Raúl Rodriguez also performed with his mother, the renowned Spanish singer Martirio, playing guitar and percussion.
In 1999, Raúl co-produced Martirio’s Flor de Piel (52 P.M.), an ambitious flamenco-jazz interpretation of South American music. In 2001, Raúl produced and arranged Martirio’s Mucho Corazon (52 P.M.) that was nominated as “Best Flamenco Album” at the 2002 Latin Grammys. His collaborations with Martirio continued with the albums “25 años” (Nuevos Medios, 2009), “El aire que te rodea” (Sony, 2010), “De un mundo raro. Cantes por Chavela” (Universal, 2013), and “Martirio – 30 años” (Universal, 2015).
In 2003 Raúl formed the acclaimed flamenco fusion group Son de la Frontera. Raúl Rodriguez played the flamenco tres he developed, based on the Cuban tres.
A seasoned session musician, Raúl Rodriguez has also recorded with Compay Segundo, Jackson Browne, Chavela Vargas, Soledad Bravo, Jerry Gonzalez, and many others.
His first solo album “Razón de Son” came out in 2014. The CD version came in a beautifully-packaged bilingual hard cover book in Spanish and English. Raúl explored the roots of flamenco and its interactions with music from other parts of the world like Latin America and Africa that came through the ports in southern Spain. “Razón de Son” included ancient rhythms like cañas, peteneras, Indian fandangos, sonerias and punto flamenco along with blues and rock.
In 2020, Raúl Rodríguez presented his show ‘3F’ through streaming services due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show marked a return to the deeper flamenco side of Raúl’s music although it still featured innovations such as a loop station and programming. The show featured dancer Marco Vargas and singer Rosa de Algeciras al cante. The show also featured flamenco “painter” Patricio Hidalgo as a special collaborator, painting on stage.
In March 2020, Raúl Rodríguez released a music video with the”La vida es una rueda” (Life is a wheel) song that will be featured in his upcoming album, “La Razón Eléctrica”. The new recording will be published released in book + audio CD format. It is the third and final volume of Rodriguez’s “AntropoMúsica creativa de los cantes de Ida y Vuelta”, (“Creative AnthropoMusic of the roundtrips songs).
On March 31, 2023 Raúl Rodríguez released ‘La Razón Eléctrica’ (Altafonte), the final work that culminated his creative trilogy that started with ‘Razón de Son’ (2014) and continued with ‘La Raíz Eléctrica’ (2017). On the book and music album “La Razón Eléctrica,” Rodríguez delves into the mechanisms of shared creativity in the cultural map that connects flamenco with the music of Africa and Latin America.
Produced, written, arranged and performed by Raúl Rodríguez himself, ‘La Razón Eléctrica”s twelve new songs explore, from a more intimate and autobiographical tone than in the previous works of the trilogy, the origin of the phenomenon creative in popular music with the conviction –says the author– that “creation is the mother of tradition”.
“Just as it happens in nature and in rhizomatic organisms when the tubers throw out branches that behave like roots, ideas also seek to connect with each other to find the best way to reproduce,” explains Rodríguez, who concludes that “this is the reason electricity, the reason for the spark, the creative logic that produces that internal current that drives the constant search for a new solution for each old problem“.
Rodríguez argues that traditional music has been able to follow a dynamic similar to that of nature itself, “stretching itself in all directions and guaranteeing its survival to the extent that it can weave its network of affections and possible connections.”
In “La Razón Eléctrica,” Rodríguez posits that embracing the “organic dimension” of creativity establishes a novel connection with cultural memory, by means of “a dynamic present that blurs borders –between the old and the new, the local and the foreign, and the personal and the universal– that only exist in the realm of the symbolic, in our perception of the world.”
The disc-book format of “La Razón Eléctrica,” as with the previous installments in the trilogy, comprises an impressive collection of more than 50 pages of field documentation, outlining the composition and narrative of each of the twelve songs that comprise it.
The musical itinerary is founded upon Rodríguez’s memories of the trips and encounters he with musicians from a variety of countries, including Mali, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, Mexico, Haiti, and the United States. These experiences have facilitated the creation of a novel type of global folklore, as those musical traditions have been internalized and adapted upon his return.
In these collaborations, the flamenco tres functions as a “rhythm translation machine that allows me to communicate using my own language and to be able to understand, by interacting, the message of others“, he assures. This synthesis of diverse influences creates “sounds and rhythms that intertwine and lose their denomination of origin to organize themselves again in the form of a type of song without a passport“.
Musicians on ‘La Razón Eléctrica’: Raúl Rodríguez (lead and backing vocals, tres flamenco, acoustic, electric and flamenco guitars, bass, keyboards, kora, ngoni, balafon, drums and percussion); Diego Galaz (violin), Nano Stern (nyckelharpa), Sirifo Kouyaté (kora) and Pablo Martín Jones (kalimba); the flamenco dance of Marco Vargas and the choruses of his daughters and his life partner, Lua, Maia and Biba.
Discography
¿Qué es lo que quieres de mí?”, with Caraoscura (BMG, 1995)
Son de la Frontera (Nuevos Medios/World Village, 2005)
Cal (Nuevos Medios/World Village, 2007)
Razón de Son (Fol, 2014)
La Raíz Eléctrica (Fol, 2017)
La Razón Eléctrica (Altafonte, 2023)
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
Updated biography
Updated biography, photos and discography.